


Nice and Quiet

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: God's Own Country (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:05:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: He takes the last few steps to the top landing, keeping his hands on Gheorghe's at his waist to pull him along. "I'm frozen, I'm having a bath. Wanna watch?"Or help. It's never going to be comfortable, doing anything under the same roof as your nan and dad watching Emmerdale downstairs, but what's the alternative?You want to drive for miles up and down hills any time you feel like a fuck?Gheorghe whispered once, teasing and low, pushing Johnny face-first against his closed bedroom door and leaving slow, deliberate fingernail marks in the flesh of his arse as he dragged down his jeans,or you want to stay nice and quiet for me right here?He's rolling his sleeves up now and there's something overwhelmingly fucking hot about that, like he's committing himself to getting a job done right. He doesn't speak, at least not in words—he doesn't have to, not with eyes like that—and Johnny stares him down in a way that starts as a challenge but wobbles and morphs into something molten and helpless when Gheorghe's hand closes around his cock under the water and slowly starts to stroke.





	Nice and Quiet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lousy_science](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/gifts).



Johnny's bad moods always seem to come with the weather, seasonal, like a flock of migrating birds. There's a term for it on the tip of his tongue, the melancholy brain wobble you get when the days are five minutes long and the bleak nights last forever, but he just can't remember it. That, too, is making him unreasonably angry, so he bangs the front door shut behind himself with far more force than he needs to, still not quite past the teenage tantrum phase of making an unnecessary racket any time he's in a mood. His dad looks up from the telly briefly, irritated, then leaves him to sulk like always.

"What's up with you, mardy arse?" his nan calls, immediately followed by a soft little huff of laughter from Gheorghe. They're out of sight the other side of the door, and when Johnny's finished stripping off his rain-soaked jacket and hat he goes in to square up to them, starting to make some half-hearted grouchy comment— _thick as thieves, you pair, always fucking sitting round giggling like this place runs itself_ —that halts and fades in his throat when he sees what they're doing.

"In through the front door," Gheorghe recites in a vaguely befuddled murmur, his clever hands uncharacteristically awkward on a long pair of knitting needles trying to guide the tip of the right into the first stitch on the left. "Go around the back"—he props the needle end into a convenient hole in the knee of his jeans, freeing himself to clumsily pass the wool around—"then, then he... I forget."

Patiently, Deirdre sing-songs the rhyme and slows the rapid clicking of her own needles right down to show him the motions. "In through the front door, go round the back, out through the window, and off jumps Jack. Jack's your stitch. No, you've dropped it again, look—right, give it here, you'll have a great ladder down your front if you leave it like that. Even Johnny could knit a bloody scarf."

 _Even Johnny_. She glances up at him lingering in the doorway when she says it, a warm little glint of a smile in her eyes so he knows she's only kidding around, but it stings anyway because that's just what happens in these fucking disaster moods. Everything stings, everything is deliberate, his ability to take a bit of easy friendly ribbing just ricochets right out the window and sinks in the mud and shit outside.

"Fuck this," he mutters, and turns to trudge upstairs instead.

"Let him stew, might do him good," he hears his nan say quietly after a moment. "You don't have to go chasing him every time he's got his back up over summat."

But Gheorghe replies, "I will always go chasing him," like that's a fucking normal thing to say, like he doesn't even care he's living in a house with someone who still, even now, goes flying off the handle over the most stupid inexplicable petty shit sometimes. Like he's not ashamed or anything. Like it's natural.

Johnny slows, and lets the footsteps behind catch up to him.

"How is the truck?"

"Buggered," he says flatly. "Wheel's gone. Too dark out to fix it now, I'll do it in the morning. Piece of shit machine."

When Gheorghe makes a quiet _hmm_ noise, Johnny can feel the vibrations and the warm, gentle breath of it against the back of his neck. The skin on his arms, still chilly and damp from the rain that in this part of the world slashes through whatever kind of clothes you try to protect yourself with, tingles with the first rushing onset of goosebumps when Gheorghe wraps both arms around his hips from behind and pulls him close. It's an unsteady, unbalanced embrace, two steps' height between them. It feels as though with only the slightest movement they might go toppling arse over tit down the entire staircase and leave Deirdre with three unlucky sods to look after instead of just the one.

"It's time for a new truck," Gheorghe murmurs. His tone is soft, like he's saying something romantic even though he's not. "That piece of shit machine will only break and break and break and make you crazy. I will help you find one, a nice one." His mouth carries on moving even when the words are done, teeth clamping around a mouthful of wool between Johnny's shoulder blades and tugging gently, playfully. "You're wet. You need to change."

Not for the first time, and likely not for the last, Johnny becomes aware that his black cloud rage has retreated entirely simply from having Gheorghe this close to him. It shouldn't be a surprise, really—the beautiful way he talks so gently and moves so surely never fails to calm the injured or irascible animals he has to work with, and Johnny's self-aware enough to know he's both—and yet the knowledge creeps up on him sometimes and seems to shake something loose inside him. It's a confusing paradox: always a surprise somehow, in spite of everything, but one that feels as comfortable and familiar to him when he greets it as the shape of Gheorghe's cock under his ravenous tongue.

He takes the last few steps to the top landing, keeping his hands on Gheorghe's at his waist to pull him along. "I'm frozen, I'm having a bath. Wanna watch?"

Or help. It's never going to be comfortable, doing anything under the same roof as your nan and dad watching Emmerdale downstairs, but what's the alternative? _You want to drive for miles up and down hills any time you feel like a fuck?_ Gheorghe whispered once, teasing and low, pushing Johnny face-first against his closed bedroom door and leaving slow, deliberate fingernail marks in the flesh of his arse as he dragged down his jeans, _or you want to stay nice and quiet for me right here?_ He's rolling his sleeves up now and there's something overwhelmingly fucking hot about that, like he's committing himself to getting a job done right. He doesn't speak, at least not in words—he doesn't have to, not with eyes like that—and Johnny stares him down in a way that starts as a challenge but wobbles and morphs into something molten and helpless when Gheorghe's hand closes around his cock under the water and slowly starts to stroke.

"I'll fucking drown if you keep on," Johnny says, an urgent whisper mumbled around Gheorghe's two fingers he's sucked into his mouth. Gheorghe only laughs, a quiet breathy little sound in his throat—and when Johnny comes shaking and spluttering in the water he's slumped into as far as his chin, Gheorghe hauls him back up and kisses him through the swears and pulses, heedless of the soapy flood they're causing on the tiles around his knees.

* * *

It's funny how sharing a bed after a lifetime of sleeping alone starts to feel like it's never been any other way. You pick a side (Gheorghe towards the window, Johnny nearest the door) and a configuration of pillows (two each, punched to different levels of flatness) and a way to arrange double the number of limbs you're used to (often it's Gheorghe's calf sprawled possessively over Johnny's and one hand tucked between his arm and skinny ribcage like a dragon afraid of someone sneaking in to steal his treasure) and it doesn't change. Your side of the bed is your side of the bed forever.

Johnny's thinking all of this lazily, hovering somewhere near a comfortable doze with this fingers combing through Gheorghe's hair, when Gheorghe twists away to look at him.

"Martin called me son today." Puzzlement softens his eyes, dark blue in the moonlight from the window, and everything he's not saying still rings like a bell somehow in the inches between them: _Does he know? Did you tell him I've never once slept in that camp bed over there?_ "This is a dialect thing, no? Like mate."

Johnny reaches for him, tracing one careful fingertip along the fan of his lashes when Gheorghe closes his eyes. There's still light enough to see his face, the slowly spreading grin in the shadow of his stubble. "Yeah, maybe. I mean he don't call everyone it, like. Not unless he were being sarcastic with some young lad down the cattle auctions." A pause, several breaths long, and Gheorghe's hand curls around Johnny's, warm and reassuring. "Don't even call me it, really. Only when he's after something. _Get t'kettle on, son_."

"That is not true, John. I've heard him."

"You hear fucking everything. You never stop listening, you."

"I wouldn't have to listen so fucking hard if you spoke more."

"Spose not." He twists onto his back, reaching his arm up onto the pillows so Gheorghe can nudge himself closer and rest his curly head on Johnny's chest. He's heavy, but his hair smells pleasantly of sweat and soap and it's nice to have him close enough to kiss there with no ulterior motive, no come-on or promise or anything, just for the happy little wriggle and wordless murmur Gheorghe always does when he feels it. "So what did he actually say?"

There's a grin in Gheorghe's voice. His mimicked accent is abominable. " _Get t'kettle on, son_."

Johnny wants to say something then, something along the lines of _suppose you're officially part of the family now_ , but it's late and he's tired and he can't quite figure out a way to word it that doesn't sound mushy as fuck. He kisses Gheorghe's hair again instead, and that feels like enough.


End file.
